Elizabeth Knudsen
Magnus Flyte is the author of the New York Times 2012 bestseller The City of Dark Magic — and is a pseudonym for not just one, but two female authors: Christina Lynch and Meg Howrey.
Christina Lynch is a novelist, television writer, journalist, book coach, and writing instructor. A former Milan correspondent for W and Women’s Wear Daily, she has written on staff for television shows such as The Dead Zone, Encore! Encore!, Unhappily Ever After and Wildfire. She is also a devoted educator and teaches television writing for UCLA Extension, how to revise your own writing for Antioch University LA, and composition at College of the Sequoias. She is a passionate advocate for higher pay and better working conditions for all adjunct instructors.
Meg Howrey was a dancer and actress who performed with the Joffrey, City Ballet of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Opera. In 2001, she won the Ovation Award for Best Featured Performance by an Actress for her role in the Broadway National Tour of Contact.
All books the two write together are written in the same style. They alternate chapters, relay style, and they do no rewriting until they finish the book. In the revision process there is a lot more discussion but there is no “this is my chapter and you can’t touch it.” By the end, they say they have trouble remembering who wrote what, and many paragraphs and even single sentences end up a combination of both writers.
But why did they choose to originally write under a male pen name? In an interview, they replied that pen names could arise from many things — a desire to escape gender stereotyping, anonymity, sheer whimsy. They had also heard men avoid books by women, so they decided to choose a male pseudonym to reach both genders. In a society where gender inequality is one of the most prominent pop culture issues, can it be true the concept of gender even affects what book one picks off the shelf?
In a survey by The Daily Mail, ninety percent of men’s fifty most-read books were written by men. Similarly, most books read by women were written by women. While most claimed they don’t go to the shelf specifically looking for an author of their own gender, both admitted they believed their gender would write a book more appealing to them. Another survey by The Guardian suggested the statistics show men are favored in the writing industry. In Britain, men are the subjects of nearly two times as many literary reviews as women. In America, the difference is even larger.
So while Lynch and Howley’s ruse was revealed rather quickly, it is safe to assume their motives for wanting to use a male pseudonym were justified. In a industry in which one’s livelihood depends on how the public likes what one does, and depending hugely on whether or not people know about it, it’s not a bad idea to try to appeal to the literary critics of the day. And it seems male authors have a step up on that score.
Although such imbalance does not exist everywhere in the literary world, it is disappointing to find anywhere. But studies do show several publishing outlets are paying more careful attention to what is being published and are attempting to ensure both men and women are equally represented in the writing industry.
Bibliography
Ball, Magdalena. “Interview with Christina Lynch and Meg Howrey (Magnus Flyte).” The Compulsive Reader (2013): 17 pars. Web. 3 Mar. 2016. <http://www.compulsivereader.com/2013/11/20/interview-with-christina-lynch-and-meg-howrey-magnus-flyte/>.
Harding, Eleanor. “Why men prefer books written by male authors: Study reveals stark gender divide in our reading habits.” Daily Mail News. Daily Mail, 26 Nov. 2014. Web. 3 Mar. 2016. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2851186/Why-men-prefer-books-written-male-authors-Study-reveals-stark-gender-divide-reading-habits.html>.
Howrey, Meg. “Meg Howrey.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. The Los Angeles Review of Books, 2016. Web. 3 Mar. 2016. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/meg-howrey>.
Lynch, Christina. Christina Lynch. Ed. Christina Lynch. N.p., 2010. Web. 3 Mar. 2016. <http://www.christinalynchwriter.com>.
Page, Benedicte. “Research shows male writers still dominate books world.” The Guardian. The Guardian, 4 Feb. 2011. Web. 3 Mar. 2016. <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/04/research-male-writers-dominate-books-world>.
Redeeming Pandora 